I ran into Creed Bratton at a backyard party over the summer, so I seized the opportunity to ask him what I'd find in his character's desk.

NBCCreed Bratton, Steve Carell.

Bratton plays Creed Bratton on NBC's "The Office," which this week -- Thursday, 7 p.m., WDSU-Channel 6 -- reruns the lovely hour-long episode from earlier in the season in which Jim and Pam get married.

"There will be several pieces of paper with numbers. Occult writings. The basic stuff."

Full disclosure: I ran into Bratton at a party organized for the purpose of people like me running into people like him, during the summer Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles. The backyard was behind a beautiful Pasadena hotel.

The critics' later visit to "The Office" set took us to the heart of the San Fernando Valley - about 6 miles straight west of Burbank's Bob Hope Airport, and a long way from Scranton, Pa., where the series is set.

Dunder Mifflin fits perfectly in the industrial-park strip in which it sits - near the dead end of a cul-de-sac and hard by a rail line. The show's warehouse set occupies the building that serves as the series' main exterior; the work cubicles and break room are in a second, smaller building.

Lafayette native Angela Kinsey, who plays "Office" scold Angela Martin, led a small group of critics on a walking tour of the main set.

Kinsey's father was a drilling engineer who moved the family to Jakarta, Indonesia, when she was a toddler. She lived there until she was 14, but made summertime trips back to Lafayette to visit family.

A sister still resides in Opelousas, an aunt and uncle in Lafayette.

"I remember it was very 'community,'" Kinsey said of her Louisiana summer visits. "We would all run out the back door and into and out of each other's houses.

"I remember eating the spiciest food as a kid. I have a daughter now (her daughter Isabel was born in May 2008), and I'll be like, 'Oh, no. That has pepper on it.' My aunts and uncles would cook in Louisiana with so much seasoning, and we would just all eat it.

"When it's cold out, I want that comfort food. I want gumbo. I love crawfish etouffee. You just can't get it unless you're in Louisiana. Sorry to those restaurants out here who say they have a Cajun chef, but it's just not the same."

Kinsey is part of the sterling ensemble of supporting actors who populate the Dunder Mifflin cube farm.

In the early episodes of the series, she and Kate Flannery (who plays Meredith) and Oscar Nunez (Oscar) and Brian Baumgartner (Kevin) were much less prominent in stories than Michael (played by Steve Carell), Dwight (Rainn Wilson), Jim (John Krasinski) or Pam (Jenna Fischer), so they entertained themselves with dreams of their own spinoff.

NBCAngela Kinsey.

"My memory of the first year or two was Oscar and Angela and I in the corner deciding that our show was better," Baumgartner said. "And we were just going to make up bits and force people to film them whenever we could."

"We also said that we could maybe pitch it to Telemundo - 'Los Contadores' ('The Accountants')," said Kinsey.

"Our computers didn't work," added Flannery. "And my agent actually told me that we were required to bring paperwork to look busy. I got a lot of work done, unfortunately."

"I thought I was going to a temp job," Nunez said. "It was a great gig. Basically, you just want to get on with your work and not be filmed. So as an actor it's weird, because you're like, 'Oh, the camera.'"

I asked the actors if driving into the somewhat grim industrial neighborhood every morning put them in a Scranton mood.

Most of them have actually been to Scranton (for "The Office" fan conventions), and said that the real thing was much more pleasant than the Hollywood's fake Scranton.

"I actually found Scranton to be beautiful," Kinsey said. "I was like, 'This looks like a Normal Rockwell painting.'"

"I'm from Philadelphia, and Scranton has always had kind of a black eye," Flannery added. "It just always has. And I like that this is not a particularly glamorous neighborhood.

"I don't like glamour. Sorry. That's why I'm in show business."

The set itself is exactly how you'd expect it to be, only smaller, and is dressed to a detail level that the camera couldn't possibly detect, even in the close-quarters kind of scenes the show trades in.

Creed's desk isn't all that weird. No mung beans. No rats. Just the basic stuff.

Odd, given the background of the actor who plays the oddest of the show's many odd characters.

Bratton recorded and toured during the late 1960s with the pop group The Grass Roots.

"I grew up in California," he said. "My mother and father played, my grandparents played - everybody played music. I started playing professionally when I was 17. I played in a band all through college, and after college went to Europe for a few years and played in a folk trio. Then I came back and The Grass Roots started."

Some of that band's hits: "Let's Live for Today," "Midnight Confessions," "Wait a Million Years," "Temptation Eyes," "Sooner or Later."

"We were always on the road," he said. "I remember playing with Moby Grape and being blown away by how good they were. I remember playing with Three Dog Night, the Mamas and the Papas, the Byrds.

"We'd also do state fairs with monkey acts and jugglers."

Bratton left the band in 1970, but still plays and records. The latest of several albums recorded under his own name is due early next year.

But Creed Bratton is Creed Bratton's main gig for now.

"I'll be walking around the market and hear 'Let's Live for Today' (on the PA) and I'll walk over to someone and say, 'That's me,'" he said. "And they walk away. Then I steal their hummus.

"There's a real cult following for Creed's character. I'm always amazed at how nice they are. Very rewarding. They just like the crazy guy.